Let’s make this a game and pretend like reviews are worth points (fun!).

• Ok, reviews written between today and 4 years ago are all given points based upon age – today’s review is worth 100 points and a review from 4 years ago is worth 25 points.
• Every review written between today and 4 years ago has points somewhere in between depending upon when it was written.
• BONUS: Reviews written more than four years ago are GIVEN NO POINTS!
• Finally, they take all the points and divide them by the number of reviews and voila! That’s your Recommendation Percentage!

What does all this mean to you and what can you do about it?  It means that in order to get, and more importantly KEEP, a high recommendation, you need to consistently have positive reviews and recommendations added to your community. Without that, you are at risk of just one negative review setting your Recommendation % back years. YEARS!!! GGAAAAHHHHH!

On the other hand…if you have old reviews on there and a low recommendation, I smell an opportunity!!  Let’s say things have stabilized at your community, maybe you’ve even made changes that have your residents really happy…this is an excellent scenario for making a significant improvement to your % just by asking some satisfied residents to post some feedback.   The exact number needed will vary based on age of the old reviews and the number of reviews already on there.

I think I see a spreadsheet to calculate it exactly in my future…more on that another day!  For now, get to know the game because if you don’t know the game you’re playing with ApartmentRatings.com, how can you win?

You can read their complete scoring model by going to their FAQ page here: http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/faq#6b

Happy Marketing!

Crisis Communication in the Social World: Part I

Have you seen the news lately? Not good, not good at all.   Tornadoes and floods and all sorts of heartbreaking scenarios that put lives, property, and businesses at risk are happening left and right.  It’s lead my mind wandering to what to do if an emergency hit one of our communities.  Since my world is all about communication, I wondered how would we communicate with residents, emergency officials, owners and loved ones?

Do you know what to do if a crisis, be it a natural disaster, fire, or corporate scandal, strikes your company?  If your company already has a crisis communication plan, but it hasn’t been touched in over 5 years, I would suggest dusting it off and giving it a good read through. In the age of Social Media, stakeholders expect to get information faster than ever before.

Be Prepared

Make a plan and rehearse it. Make sure the plan includes the following, at a minimum:

1)       A crisis team. Choose people who can handle stress, who know how to manage crises, and have a good understanding of social media and how to talk to your stakeholders online.

2)       A clear message. Write messages BEFORE you need them to express your commitment to residents, employees, owners and other stakeholders using simple, clear and straightforward language.

3)       A strong network. Know who and where your audience is so you can find them quickly – as soon as a crisis hits.  And by “where they are” I mean where they are online. Which sites are you going to use to communicate your message? Facebook, Twitter and your web site should be part of the plan, but also consider LinkedIn, especially if you have 3^rd party stakeholders.  Make sure they know where to find you, too.

4)       A set of crisis information tools. Take a tip from PR pros: get a toll-free phone number and build a crisis website (called a dark site) now, and save them for when/if a crisis erupts. Regularly test them to ensure they work before you need them.

5)       Back-end support. Make sure your company’s servers and phone lines can handle the traffic in the event of a crisis.  You will be overwhelmed and you will need it. That isn’t the time to deal with crashing phones and web sites.

Has your company dealt with a crisis? If so, what did you learn from it and what would you do differently? Stay safe out there.

Take care, Laurel Zacher

1.       To find: Information/pages on a particular web site without having to go search that site (e.g. I want to go to ABC Apartments page on Move.com without going through the whole search process)

Use: site:xxx.com

Examples: site:move.com, site:rent.com, site:multifamilyinsiders.com

Why: Some sites (like the ILSs) have search functions, but others don’t.  Save the time of going through the search process and weeding through search results – if you want to know if your or another property is on a particular web site, just search for it in Google and you will get the direct link. This also works with Craigslist, as long as you also tell it which metropolitan to search. For me, it would look like this: “ABC apartments site:minneapolis.craigslist.org “

2.       To find: An exact phrase

Use: quotation marks

Examples: “Medicine Lake Apartments” not Medicine Lake Apartments

Why: I want to do a search for Medicine Lake Apartments, which happens to be on Medicine Lake. Without the quotations, Google will search all of my words and will bring up listings about the apartments, the history of Medicine Lake, nearby apartments ON Medicine Lake. This cuts through the clutter and ONLY brings up pages with “Medicine Lake Apartments” on them.

3.       To find: Less, more relevant info

Use: minus sign (aka negative keywords)

Examples: Minneapolis apartments –towhomes -townhome

Why: Let’s say I want to find all apartments in Minneapolis, but NOT communities that also have townhomes. Using the minus sign in front of words I want to exclude means those pages are kept out of the search results.

4.       To find: PowerPoint presentations, PDFs and Excel spreadsheets

Use: filetype:ppt, filetype:pdf, filetype:xls

Examples: resident survey filetype:pdf

Why: Google will narrow down the search results to only these file types. Have you ever seen a presentation or read a PDF someplace and remember the topic, but not the web site? This is your fix.

Take care, Laure

l Zacher

Verdi olives with QR code on bag

I’m becoming obsessed with QR codes. I see them everywhere I turn. They’re on bags of olives at Costco, for heaven’s sake (note: sorry for the poor photo – I had two hungry boys with me who didn’t understand the concept of patience for the sake of one’s art). Luckily I haven’t started dreaming about them yet, but you never know…

There’s been a lot of debate lately about whether they are a flash in the pan or not. Time will tell, but I fall on the “or not” side of things.  However, I don’t see them as the mysterious and sexy temptress that others do.  I see them as utilitarian as “Sarah, Plain and Tall” myself.  They are no more mysterious than an email address or phone number and I’d tend to say use and promote them in the same way (well, sort of but we’ll get in to that at another time).

It’s a tool to get information into the hands/brain/mobile device of your customer in a more efficient manner.  Simple, right?

Scan it – boom, they’re at your mobile site (or Facebook page, or ApartmentRatings page…). Scan it – boom, they have your contact info in their phone. Scan it – boom, they see your current concession or special offer. Scan it – boom, they have the image of your latest resident referral flyer.

Ok, I’ll stop with the irritating sound effects, but I won’t stop talking about how USEFUL I think QR codes are.  This is the first in a series about QR codes and looking at different ways to use them.  Watch for more and as always, share your experiences and comments.

Listen, I may be a little biased, but I’m not closed minded.

Now go make the day great!

Take care, Laurel Zacher

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